The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (91 page)

He chuckles, there’s a giddy quality to the laugh that almost completely belies his comments. Morrigan was anything but giddy.

I take a step towards him, and he takes a step back, light on his feet, almost dancing, keeping out of reach of my scythe.

“So you were never trying to become RM?”

“What part of me saying I’d not wish it on my worst enemy did you not understand? For this to work I had to not only die, but be obliterated. Sent to a non-space that only the Stirrer god could navigate.”

“All your plans, all your efficiencies, they were just a scam?”

Morrigan scowls. “Not at all. I don’t deny I would have made a fabulous RM. Mortmax would have run most smoothly. And it will, just in one glorious burst: the world’s death. I’ll achieve what the Orcus was working toward without the spread of eons. Everything must go, and I’ll be the one to see it out.” He lifts a hand and looks at it, as though seeing it for the first time. “Years ago, I made my deal. I never expected you to help me.”

“And what happens then? What do you get out of it?”

“I get forever. I get worshippers. I get to remake the world in my image, and it will be a far better place for the absence of you and your ilk.”

More crows arrive, raucous and itching for a fight. Morrigan tilts his head and gives me such a recriminating smile. “Really, Steven,
how quickly you pick up bad habits. The Orcus and their silly little black birds!”

“And this is coming from someone who uses sparrows?”

“Believe me, they are neither silly nor little.” Morrigan shakes his hands, two slender birds slip from his fingertips.

The inklings swell, in the blink of an eye they’re twice their normal size and they keep growing. Fangs curve in wicked rows from their beaks. With every thrashing wing beat they expand, drawing mass from the night itself, or the light of the comet, doubling until they are larger than any crow.

They rise into the sky, growth slowing, and they’re upon my birds, tearing them out of the air.

“Call off your crows, or I will let my pets devour every single one of them,” Morrigan says.

The sparrows circle above us like great malevolent bats. Around them weave my crows warily, warily. Blood and feathers tumble down. There’s a rage in the sky that is palpable. HD echoes with it inside of me, a wild and bitter reflection of my poor stymied Avians.

“Run,” I whisper at Lissa.

“No,” she says.

“Then stay behind me please.” I need to end this quickly. I know what I am doing, I think.

A swift strike, and the bloodshed will be over. The god will be dead, and we can deal with the aftermath. I run at Morrigan, and he doesn’t move. All the better to chop off his head.

I swing Mog at his neck. I’ve never been faster or more certain in my strike.

Morrigan drops, and catches the snath of the scythe neatly. I feel the shock of contact as it connects with his palm. He closes his fingers around the stony curve. I try and yank it free. It might as well be stuck in concrete.

Morrigan grins. “This is no bloody carnival and dance on the top
of the One Tree. Nor is it a Negotiation with RMs looking hungrily on. This is you and me. Forces incarnate, and I am stronger.”

Mog screams. I try and change it to the blades, to free it from his grasp that way, but Mog is immutable. I’ve no power over my scythe.

“I’ll be having that, thank you,” Morrigan says, and pulls Mog from my grip.

Mog moans, it struggles, but it can’t work its way free.

I rush at him and he jabs the handle of the scythe dismissively into my chest. It is a single easy movement, but one all too persuasive. I tumble back and land hard on my rear, winded. I flick my head around, where’s Lissa?

Then I see her, circling around behind us. Morrigan’s seen her too.

“I wouldn’t try that, Ms. Jones. Not if you want to keep your head. Unlike your boyfriend, I know how to use a scythe.”

Lissa steps backwards, hurls her knife at his head. He casually bats it out of the air and tsks. Morrigan turns back to me, still on my arse trying to get air into my lungs.

“She never listens does she?”

“Leave her alone,” I manage, barely a whisper.

“She’s nothing to me,” Morrigan says knocking another knife out of the air. “I’ve no time for this, and we’ve chatted enough. Far too much, in fact, but it gets that way when you’ve been dead a while, loosens the tongue.”

There are more crows, certainly enough, now, to keep his two sparrows in check. A swift battle’s being fought in the sky directly above, and they prove themselves far more capable than me. Crows collide, one after another, with an inkling. Clutching at wings, back and legs. The weight of their numbers brings the inkling down. It lands with a loud and very wet slap. Black ink stains the pavement.

Enough of my Avians get past the remaining bird to harry Morrigan. The rest bring the other inkling down. They’re angry, mad at
this monster that corrupted my sparrows. I’ve never seen them more focused in their rage. And it means nothing.

Morrigan cuts them out of the air, blood and feathers, sections of dead and dying birds crash into the earth. I can taste their deaths; feel their shocked entry to the Underworld. There’s been too much of that today. I call them off.

“Wise decision, Steven. Live to fight another day, and all that. Pity there aren’t any days left.”

He swings the scythe in a circle before him. The air crackles, seems to peel away. And where the blade goes a flap of…reality opens. A ruddy light spills through, everything it touches glows faintly blue. The color of the dead.

“Bet you didn’t know you could do that,” Morrigan says.

My biceps burns. Wal pulls himself free. “Fuck me,” he says. “Isn’t that Morrigan?”

“Not now!” I drive him back onto my arm, as I get up. I sprint towards Morrigan, running to knock the legs out from under him, trying not to think of Mog’s blade slashing into me. I don’t even see the scythe’s handle hit me again. I’m just back on my arse, Morrigan looking down at me with that disapproving gaze.

“Time, as they say, to unleash hell. But first, this.” He draws a symbol in the air. A fiery circle that is at once the most circular circle I have ever seen and the least, as though it’s angular as well as curved.

It hovers a moment by his hand, offending my eye with its off geometry, then with a flick of his wrist the circle is flung at me. The flame pulses through my being, like the roughest, most horrible of pomps. I scream, thrash on my back. Something inside me chortles. I’ve a vision of blood and fire. A terrible pressure builds deep in my skull.

Am I having a stroke? Could I be having a stroke?
I clutch at my head.

See ya
, a voice whispers, and it isn’t Morrigan’s.

The pressure goes. I open my eyes, in time to see Morrigan step through the hole he’s made.

He’s gone. But he’s not the only one.

The crows are scattering, ignoring me.

And I can’t feel them.

I can’t feel anything, but what my regular senses tell me. The rain is cold as it strikes my face. I start to shiver. I look at my hands. Close my eyes. It’s gone. All of it is gone. No, not quite. Something remains. A fragment. Small and wounded. But it isn’t enough. I can’t even pretend that.

An arm slides under mine.

“Steve, are you OK?” Lissa says as she helps me to my feet, and we both stare at that shimmering portal, it’s already spreading, reaching slender but thickening fingers into the sky. The air stinks of fire. As though Hell and the living world can’t handle the friction of their contact. I can hear the creaking of the One Tree, as raw and naked as if I were dead.

Morrigan has cut a doorway to Hell, and there’s no way I know of to close it.

“It’s gone,” I say.

“Yeah, he’s gone.”

“Not Morrigan. Not just Morrigan. HD is gone. The Hungry Death is free of my body. We have to get to Number Four,” I say pulling her towards me, and shifting.

Only I don’t shift. I’m standing there, still on Queen Street Mall, in the rain. Of course I can’t shift, I don’t have that power anymore. I don’t have any power; in fact I can hardly stand.

There’s a sound coming from the portal: part electric buzz, part growl. Both Lissa and I turn towards it.

“I think we better run,” I say.

And a Stirrer comes charging out of Hell.

PART TWO

THE WAVE

The wave—there is a movement there!

“T
HE
C
ITY
IN THE
S
EA
”—E
DGAR
A
LLAN
P
OE

T
he Stirrer stands there a moment, sniffing at the air like a dog seeking a new scent. Its head swings on its long neck, its eyes focus on us.

“So that’s what they look like in the flesh,” Lissa says. “Now I’ve another reason not to like them. Too many teeth for one thing.”

The Stirrer isn’t bound in human skin and bones. It’s the real deal. Tall, long-limbed and sharp-toothed. Someone in the mall screams, and I remember at last that we are not alone, that this has played out in front of an audience, most of whom are suddenly deciding it’s better to be anywhere but here.

The Stirrer makes a swift and predatory movement towards the screamer: a man backing slowly away, two bags of shopping held in front of him like a shield. The Stirrer smacks its toothy mouth, hunches down as though ready to spring.

So here it is, the end of the world, and it happened so easily. I can barely move. What can I do to stop it now? Does it even matter?

“Steven!” Lissa grabs my arm. “Get a fucking grip, OK.” I look at her blankly.

Lissa sighs and steps in front of me, holding her knives loosely in both hands. “Hey you,” she shouts. “Hey, dickhead.”

Screamer and Stirrer both turn to face her.

The Stirrer bounds towards her, but Lissa’s ready. Then again, she was born ready.

Her movements are fluid, and no less predatory than the Stirrer’s.

She takes a step back, feet splashing in the rain, feints with her left knife then kicks her attacker in the stomach with all the persuasion a pair of Docs can provide.

The creature goes down.

She slices open her hand. Blood flows, and she punches out, catching the Stirrer in the mouth just as it’s getting groggily to its feet. The Stirrer growls, shudders, falls dead to the ground.

“That’s new,” she says. “Easier than I thought. Blood still works.”

“Yeah, if you can bleed, it can die,” I manage.

“Good to know.”

There’s another Stirrer coming through, and another. Someone else screams, more shoppers who have just walked onto the scene. It’s not the sort of thing you expect to see on exiting the Myer Center.

Lissa groans. “Screamers, I’ve never understood screamers. All it does is draw attention to yourself. You come across a monster, surely you keep quiet. Nothing else makes any sense!”

She turns to address the crowd. “All of you!” Lissa yells. “Get out of here! Now. Fuck it! Now!” She sheathes her knives and grabs my hand, keeping one hand blood-slicked and ready.

All down the mall, doors close, roller doors to shop fronts clattering down. People aren’t stupid, even the screamers are running for it.

A Stirrer comes at us, it stumbles, straightens, and stands unsteadily on its feet, and Lissa punches it in the head. Another successful stall, but there are more, and we’re still not moving, and that’s my fault.

“We have to go.” Lissa tugs on my hand. “They’re still acclimatizing to our reality, or something, but I suspect they’re going to get faster, and soon. We need to mobilize, and we don’t want to be pinned down here. And you, you need to move. Right this instant, lover.” I let her lead me.

We reach the edge of Queen Street and George, where the buildings obscure the mall, and I look back one last time at the beginning of our battle against the Stirrers on earth. I’d been so confident after my confrontation with Water. The way I’d handled that, finally facing my fear. And the love Lissa had shown in bringing me back had helped too. I thought I could take on anything.

And now this.

Three Stirrers. Four. Five. More keep coming through the portal, and it keeps growing. And I can’t stop them. I’ve no HD inside me, I’m as powerless as any punter.

I didn’t expect it to be easy. But this is something altogether different. How did we end up here? Total fucking Steve Fail.

Lissa drags me along, holding my hand. Already on the phone, I catch snippets of her conversation.

“Tim, we need everybody in the…Everybody. Stirrers in the mall, and they’re the toothy variety. I know. I know. He’s with me. He can’t…Mobilize.”

We make it to the front door of Number Four just as the first of my Pomps come through. They look to Lissa, and she doesn’t disappoint them.

“The mall,” Lissa says. “Don’t do anything stupid until reinforcements arrive. They look scary, but they’re not so tough. Cut shallow, move swift, these things won’t know what hit them.”